Crumbling
by Eve Davidson
Summary: It seems to me that after Craig ends up in that shelter after running away when Ashley goes to England, it seems that he would go to a mental hospital. This is what happens if he did.
1. Chapter 1

He'd stopped taking his meds. Why should he take them? No one believed he was better. Not Ashley and not Joey, even though he was sleeping and hardly writing songs and not talking a mile a minute and not bouncing off the walls.

And then everything crashed down around him. Ashley leaving, and not just because she'd always wanted to go to England and her dad got her a job but because of him. And Joey and Caitlin fighting because of him. It had seemed better for everyone if he left. So he did.

All he could do was play the guitar next to Skinny, hope for enough money to eat. Days and days of it, and he almost forgot his other lives. His life with Joey that crumbled when he landed in the hospital with a mental illness. His life with his father that crumbled when Albert beat him. His life with his mother that crumbled when she got cancer, and she got thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker until she was no bigger than a child.

And Skinny getting angry with him, angrier and angrier, and he would yell and shove and hit him when things didn't go his way and Craig looked at him with the fearful eyes like he used to look at his father.

Play the guitar, and don't sing and don't work on any songs. Play the guitar and follow Skinny's lead, eyes downcast. Days and days. And maybe his crumbling sense of morals wasn't as far gone as Skinny's, or he wasn't hungry enough, but he couldn't rob somebody. And he'd had it out with Skinny but Skinny won, and he remembered laying on the ground, trying to breathe with the wind knocked out of him. Next thing after that he was talking to Joey, and he didn't know where he was or what he was saying.

Joey reaching out to touch his split lip, bruised cheek, and he jerked away.

"Joey, what did I do with my guitar?" Looking around he saw he was at a shelter, packed in with mangy people at the bottom of their luck. His luck had run out pretty fast being only 16.

"C'mon. Let's go home," Joey said, his voice and words careful, and he was looking at him with the compassion you might show an injured wild animal.

"Okay," Craig said, and followed Joey to the car. But they didn't go home. Joey drove to the hospital.

"No, Joey,"

"Yes. You need to be here. To be stabilized with your+"

"No, Joey, no…"

"With your medication, Craig, you've been off of it for too long"

"I'm not going," He crossed his arms across his chest, stared out the car window.

"You're going. Whether you agree to go or not. I will drag you in there if I have to,"

He glared at Joey and felt this crashing wave of despair.

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So I followed him into the emergency room. There was no choice. It was too bright in there, with the flourescent lights in those bars buzzing overhead. Or maybe I'd just been in the dark too long. I squinted and ducked my head and Joey took my arm and pulled me along after him.

"Sit here. Wait here," Joey said, and I slumped down in the chair, watched him go over to the receptionist and explain in his way, the way he always talked with his hands and the way he always glanced over at me.

Joey came back, sat next to me. Things were starting to unravel, to go really fast. He was looking at me like he was going to start talking and I really wished he wouldn't.

"Craig, I don't know what to say to you," he said. I squeezed my eyes shut, 'don't say anything,' I thought.

"Just because I fight with Caitlin, it doesn't mean it's your fault. It's not. I don't think it's anyone's fault. Caitlin and I, I don't know, we're not in the same place. She needs things from her career, she needs things I can't provide. I can't be all that success and all that challenge for her in L.A. So what I'm trying to say is it has nothing to do with you, Craig,"

I looked at him from the corner of my eye. Beyond my racing thoughts some of what he was saying was coming through. Him fighting with Caitlin, it wasn't really about me. It was about them. But Ashley, she left the country because of me. Joey couldn't gloss that over.

"Yeah, but Ashley…" I said, and whipped my head around at the sound of the door opening. Some lady with a snot nosed little kid. The kid looked maybe three. The lady glanced at me and looked away, and it was probably because I looked crazy. I'd been in these clothes for days, and they had dirt and blood on them, and my hair was all over the place. I looked awful. The lady looked away but the little kid stared at me.


	2. Chapter 2

Things were just crumbling around me. Sitting in this waiting room, looking at the gray walls. I'd been here before. My dad used to work here. So the looks I was getting from some of the staff? Maybe they remembered me. That nurse, the one with the spaced teeth and the nice smile and the gray and blond hair? She's the one I talked to that day I met my dad at the hospital and she talked about boarding school. So he'd told them I was at boarding school. What was he supposed to say?

"Look, Joey, can we just go home? I just-I don't want to be here,"

He gave me that sad look, that 'this is for your own good' look and I knew he wouldn't take me home. I could feel the dirt on me from days of being outside, of sleeping in these clothes. I wanted to go home and take a shower and sleep in my bed. I didn't want to get locked up in a psych ward.

"Please, Joey? Okay? I'll be good, I promise. I'll-I'll stay on my meds, okay?"

I licked my lips and waited for him to say no in whatever wordy convoluted way he would say it. I kept looking up whenever people walked in. I kept hearing all the other conversations. I kept thinking of Ashley. Thinking of Skinny hitting me and kicking me. Thinking of Joey and Caitlin fighting and maybe it wasn't exactly about me but I didn't help.

"Craig, listen. I want you to get help. You need help that I can't give you. It won't be for long, probably not as long as the first time, but you need to see the doctors. You need to…get help,"

I knew he wouldn't give in. So I sat there waiting, both of my legs bouncing up and down. I couldn't sit still. I wanted to get up but didn't think Joey would let me. He was keeping an eye on me, ready to grab me if I moved. My thoughts were going so fast, some of them I could only catch the tail end of, like a comet streaking by. My dad used to work here. That was weird. My mom died here. I was crazy here. Jesus, was that fucked up or what? I wondered about Ashley, what she was doing. Maybe she was meeting some other guy, the one with the English accent.

I thought about the song for the Kevin Smith movie and how it had seemed to be going okay, until Spinner screwed it up. He said he wouldn't call Joey. I was supposed to do that song with Ash, but she took off. I almost wanted to cry, remembering standing at her house as she drove away and said, 'see you in September,'

"Joey, please can we just go home-"

"Craig. No," It was like he was yelling but he wasn't. He said it very quietly and very pissed off. I hung my head. I was pissing him off. I'd try not to ask him again but I didn't want to be here, couldn't stand it here. I didn't want to be back in the psych ward and didn't see why I couldn't just take the stupid medicine at home. What was the difference?

"Craig?" Someone called my name, and Joey nudged me like I didn't even know. I stood up and went through the door by the receptionist's desk, left Joey there in the waiting room.

I'd sort of been through this before, when I first got diagnosed as bipolar. I blinked, thinking how similar it was. Except this nurse was different. She had a stethoscope around her neck and she wore little white leather sneakers.

"What happened?" she said softly, and indicated that I should sit on the examining table. So I hopped up on it, sitting on the white sheet made of paper. Swung my legs and kind of kicked the bottom of the thing with my heels. Rocked back and forth a little. I had so much energy, I couldn't help it. I had to move.

"Craig?" she said again, and I looked up at her.

"What happened?"

"What?" I said.

"Your lip was bleeding, your eye is swollen…what happened?"

I touched my lip where Skinny hit me, it was sore. Touched my eye. It felt all puffy and watery. My dad never hit me in the face, he didn't. He kicked me though, and punched me but not in the face. It was worse with my dad, though. It wasn't like I could fight back. I was younger. And he was my dad. I mean, c'mon, I couldn't hit him or anything. The closest I ever came was shoving him outside that restaurant the night he died. Shit. He _died_ that night. I could have taken Skinny, I was sure I could have. Except I didn't. He sort of won that fight.

"It was a fight," I said, looking down.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" she said, and I shrugged. I didn't like to admit being hurt, getting hurt. It was embarrassing, like so many things were. Like Ashley asking me if I took my medication in front of everyone.

"I don't know," I mumbled, kicked the back of the exam table. I wanted to go home. I wasn't in the mood for this. I was hungry, dirty, I felt like shit.

She listened to my lungs and I jerked away a bit when she put the stethoscope thing near where Skinny kicked me. Then she took vital signs. I sighed. This was just the nurse. Then I'd have to talk to the doctor and then the psych guy and maybe they wouldn't admit me. Maybe they'd say just go home with Joey like I wanted to. I'd have to try and act really normal. Nothing was wrong. So I ran away, no big deal. So some homeless idiot beat me up. So what?

I wouldn't like ramble on to any of them about anything, that manic shit. No. I'd just be quiet and good and whatever so I could go home. Now the doctor came to see me and he was talking about getting x-rays since Skinny kicked my ribs and maybe he broke them. I rolled my eyes. The doctor was this kind of young guy with wavy hair and a wide smile. He looked sort of tired. He looked like maybe he had been sleeping in an empty exam room and they had to wake him up to come and see me, like they did on "ER".

"Look, I'm fine. I really am. I just want to go home," I said, and he looked at me like that might not happen.

"Craig, you ran away, right?" he said, glancing at some papers in his hand.

"Yeah,"

"And you got in a fight, and you're bipolar and haven't been on your medication in some time, right?"

"Yeah," I felt all defeated. It sounded bad. It sounded like I'd never go home.

"So just get the x-ray and talk to the mental health guy and we'll go from there," he said, and I saw the dark circles under his eyes and wondered how many hours a week he worked, wondered how many fucked up mental patients like me he saw. I'd heard once that ER s are filled with people with heart problems and mentally ill people.

I had to wait around a while for the x-ray. They left me alone, so I laid back on the crinkly paper sheet and swung my legs and thought about Joey being out in the waiting room. Who was with Ang? Maybe Caitlin. Maybe Emma. I didn't know. I remembered that Joey had Emma stay with Ang when him and Sean came looking for me when I ran away that time in ninth grade.

I'd been sort of avoiding thinking about Ashley. I'd think of her a little bit but then think of other shit. Ashley. I thought things were going so well, I mean I really thought that it was going well, and that things were okay. I had no idea she was getting like, that she had to get away. Always worrying about me and the meds and my moods and all of that. She couldn't handle this bipolar shit, and she didn't even have it. In the hospital the first time she said we weren't over, and I believed her. But it was basically over right then. It changed. Everything changed. I stopped being her normal boyfriend and went to being the psycho boyfriend she always had to save or something.


	3. Chapter 3

I was still trying to think I'd go home with Joey, despite talking to the mental health guy who kept having to redirect my attention because I couldn't follow along. It was so hard, though. Things were going so fast, and I was in a little bit of pain from Skinny kicking the shit out of me. Then I saw the guy start to call the psych floor to see if they had a bed.

"No," I said, and he glanced up at me, "please just let me go home, I'll take the medication, I promise,"

He looked at me with this funny look. It was like he was kind of burned out, doing that job. And it was like he cared in this distant, professional way he probably had to or he'd go crazy, too. And under all that he looked like he felt sorry for me. But he still shook his head.

"Sorry, Craig, but you need at least a few days of acute care. You need to be hospitalized,"

By this time I'd had all the x-rays and all that shit and I was fine, just bruised and sore but nothing was broken. Of course they saw the healed fractures from when my dad had hurt me. And I could see the sort of puzzled looks on the lab tech's faces. But all that shit is in my charts, all that history, so I didn't feel the need to discuss it.

So I was still in the hospital johnnie, and I guess my clothes were being burned somewhere, they were disgusting.

"No!" I slammed my hand down on the desk and he jumped back, startled.

"I want to go home!" I said.

"You can't. And if you keep that up you'll be restrained, so I would suggest you cut it out," He stared me down, and there was some fear in his eyes but it was buried beneath some sort of tiredness. And I knew he was right. It had happened before, the first time I was in the hospital. They won. They always won.

I slumped down in the chair. This so completely sucked. No wonder Ashley left me. I'd probably have left, too. So I just sat there and listened to the guy talk about me to the nurse on the psych floor, then she'd call the psychiatrist and they decide if I get admitted or not. And flipping out down here at this guy wouldn't help anything.

"I've got a patient down here, his name is Craig Manning, yeah…16 years old, date of birth September 8, 1988...he's bipolar, been off his meds for at least a week, yeah….I've got a med list right here, yeah, he's on lithium, seroquel, depakote…no other health issues, no…okay, the presenting problem, he ran away, was apparently living on the streets, got beat up, no real injuries, just bruises, split lip, no stitches…yeah…he lives with his step-father and younger half sister, his mother died when he was 11? I think 11, let me check, yep…his father is dead, too, he died when he was 14. Oh, and the father was abusive, just physical abuse, verbal probably, that always goes along with it…yeah…okay, call me back,"

Shit. It was sort of weird to hear all your tragic history summed up in one five minute phone call. I was just a case, just a number in some file. It didn't matter. But sometimes that was almost comforting.

Maybe the psychiatrist would say no, that I wasn't bad enough to need to be in the hospital. I fucking hated it so much. Trapped there. Taking meds, going to groups, talking to people all the time. I didn't want to go. Maybe I could pray. I was that desperate. 'Please God, don't make me have to go,'

It would be a little wait, anyway. So I waited, and thought about Ashley. How could she do that to me? How could she say she had to get away from me? I thought we were on the same page, that we were both codependent. Maybe it was just me. So I was cramping her style. She had to go and try new things. But she was always new for me. She was all I needed. Why couldn't she see how it was? How I felt? I had thought she had. Guess I was wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

They let Joey come in with me since it was taking like an hour for the psych floor to get back to the guy, and I'll bet they told Joey about my little outburst. That's what sucked about having a mental illness, one of the million things that sucked about it, everyone knew everything.

"Hey, Craig, doing okay?" Joey said, his voice all cautious.

"No, not really, Joey. I want to go home, but instead I have to stay here and that fucking sucks," Shit, I swore in front of Joey. I tried not to do that, usually. Once I swore in front of my father and he whipped me with his belt. I couldn't sit for a week. But it wasn't that. It wasn't, like, respectful or whatever to swear like that in front of Joey. But after this, this whole not taking my meds and staying on the streets, it was harder to keep track of these things.

"Sorry," I said, my head down.

"It's okay, Craig," he said, and rubbed my back. I didn't like being touched and I knew Joey knew that but he was touchy. It was because he was Italian or something. I'd gotten better at putting up with it, with him hugging me and rubbing my back sometimes. But it was tougher after getting beaten up by that jerk Skinny. So I closed my eyes and waited for him to stop.

"Look, can't I just go home with you? Don't, don't sign the thing, okay, please Joey?" I was like begging him. There was this voluntary thing he had to sign for me to go to the psych ward and if he didn't sign it maybe I could go home.

"Craig, I'm sorry. You need to be here. It won't be for long. C'mon, buddy, I'm sorry. I want what's best for you. You've been off the medication for awhile and you need to be in the hospital,"

I sighed, gave up. I couldn't fight them, I couldn't win. I'd have to go. I felt like hitting something or someone again and it was really hard not to. I had so little control.

The psych guy popped his head back into the room.

"Craig, they've got a bed for you. It's all set. Uh, nice meeting you," he left again, and I didn't know who he was saying it was nice meeting, me or Joey or both of us. I looked at Joey with my best most wounded look, like he was forcing me to come here since he brought me to the damn emergency room in the first place.

Joey stood up, picked up his jacket. He knew from the last time that it was best just to go, all the information was in the charts and the nurses and doctors on the psych floor knew it all anyway. He'd be in the way.

"Okay, good. Craig, I'm gonna go. I'll come and visit you tomorrow, okay buddy?"

I nodded as he walked out the door. Great. Damn it this sucked. If Ashley hadn't totally deserted me like that none of this would ever have happened. So I just waited for whoever would come down to bring me up to the stupid psych floor.

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"Hi, Craig?" It was a girl, probably a nurse but I couldn't tell since her badge was flipped around.

"Hi," I said. I went with her through the back of the E.R. and down a hallway to the elevators. Up to the third floor and the locked psych ward. Inside I saw the nurses and mental health techs behind the desk. I had to get weighed and measured and my vital signs taken again. I wouldn't talk. I wouldn't be all manic. Maybe then they'd let me leave.


End file.
